Yo, are you that Scruffy guy who put up videos on YouTube, like, ages ago? I have memories of watching your stuff when I was just a kid, too, and you were one of my inspirations to pick up game dev for myself.
It all started coming back to me once I saw your artstyle and characters here on itch. It's nice to see that you're still going! I'll have to check this out. The gameplay looks pretty nice from the video!
That’s me! I sat down, made a new channel, rebranded a bit, took things back to the drawing board, and I’m glad I did because I have a much more focused style now. I put aside that stupidly ambitious game (now known as Super Freaks 4ever) aside for a bit to do this first for the practice. I never thought I’d be an inspiration for anybody so that really makes my day hearing that, thank you!
How have you been? It’s probably been a few years since my last channel, I’m curious as to what you’ve been up to since then?
You're welcome! I remember finding your channel back in the era when the YoyoGames Sandbox was still a thing, and I had been wanting to try and put something together with the old Game Maker 7. I was a pretty clueless kid at the time and didn't really know what I was doing, but I looked up to a bunch of people who were putting out fun stuff and was hoping that I could be like them someday. I distinctly remember you had some scrolling shooter game called Strato-Scruffy that I thought was really cool with all the unique bosses, so I guess you could say that my goal was to make something at least comparable to that, haha.
Pretty much everything I made at the time was hot garbage since I was a dumb kid and didn't really understand a lot of the stuff in Game Maker's drag-and-drop interface either. At some point I decided to give up on programming a game at the time, and I went off to use some of the PC RPG Makers for a few years while mainly working on my art and spriting ability.
I did eventually return and picked up GameMaker Studio 1.4, but I still didn't ever share anything I made with the public for two years or so. Eventually, I guess something clicked, and I started using GML to make new games instead of the drag-and-drop interface. I finally started liking my output well enough to make an account here and posted a scrolling shooter back in 2017 (Dark Space).
Since then, I started feeling more of a passion to continue with game dev, and I've been making more games in GMS 1.4. I finished my proudest project (Moth to the Moon) late last year, but my brother and I recently started planning to add original music and overhauled sound effects to the game. A few things are done for that, but nothing that's ready to go public yet. I'm hoping to at least get a trailer out when all the new sound effects are ready. Aside from that, I've also been trying to put out some smaller games on occasion to keep my abilities fresh.
